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Transcript of Video:

Welcome to your yoga teacher training with Shambhavananda yoga at Konalani. 

As one of the first yoga teacher trainings trainings in the country, the training in which you are embarking has over 30 years of teacher training refinement, revision and expertise— as well as over a hundred years of meditation based lineage teachings— giving you an experience that is informed both by the ancient teachings of the yogic tradition as well modern advancements in movement science. 

At the core of this training, and this tradition, is not just yoga postures or sequences, breathing exercises or even meditation techniques— our biggest goal with our time together is to use those tools to unlock your spiritual potential, and give you a glimpse at the life long practice of inner awareness. ShambhavAnanda Yoga is much more than a teacher training, it’s a river of Shakti, spiritual energy, that can transform your life. 

Think of us as your guides on this journey down this river. Between the two of us we have over a hundred trainings of experience, guiding literally hundreds of students down the rapids of spiritual growth. We know how to support you, to keep you paddling along the journey, to help you find your authtentic teaching voice and surrender all that doesn’t serve you— to grow beyond even your own perceived personal limitations. 

We support you by using the same systems that our teachers used to support us on our journey—because when you train in ShambhavAnanada Yoga, your not just training with a teacher, your training with a tradition. As Acharyas in the shambhavAnnada yoga tradition, we work hard within ourselves to ‘get out of the way’, first to allow the teachings to come through, but also to allow your voice to be heard, and for your work to be seen clearly and consciously. 

On a practical level, though, we have also integrated lots of personalized feedback checkpoints throughout your training to ensure not only your personal growth, but your personal well being as you grow. 

These checkpoints include personalized teaching feedback for every family of postures, journal based check-ins to help you navigate the bigger experience of spiritual growth, One-On-One live-online review classes together, as well as small live-online yoga, meditation and philosophy group classes every week throughout your training.

As we said, ShambhavAnanda Yoga is much more than a teacher training, its a community of individuals joined together by their wish to grow through the practices of yoga, in Sanskrit it’s called a Sangha, a spiritual community, and it represents a reservoir of support for each of us as we continue to navigate this river together. 

Speaking of the river, let’s take a look at how your actual training flows, ie. Your training courses and classes. 

You might be taking the training in our live-online group setting, or at an individually paced setting— either way you will encounter the same content of the training which we can look at now together. 

For those learning live-online, most of this content will be incorporated into your live-online training day, so all you have to do is sign in and pay attention as we go. For self paced learners, this same content has been broken down into digestible bites for you to work through at your own pace. 

As you begin looking at the website you’ll see the work is organized into multiple sections, or modules. In the first 2/3 of your training, these modules are organized around a family of postures, such as forward bends or shoulder based postures. In the last 1/3 of your training the emphasis progresses to sequencing techniques and teaching methods. 

Each module contains 6 main categories of content. Let’s take a look at the first class of each module, the lecture. 

For Live-Online learners, this will be done live during your scheduled classes, and this website serves as a place you can return to review the content of the class itself. For self paced learners, this same content is broken down into digestible portions— anywhere from 45 minutes to 1.5 hour lectures. 

For all learners, the lectures are intended to be viewed alongside your PDF workbook, which can be downloaded at the top of the website and viewed digitally or printed out, depending on your learning style. 

Each video is also accompanied by a transcript of the class, to support text based learning styles. Below each lecture section is also a space for comments or questions, which are directly messaged to us when you send them, allowing us to answer any questions you have along the way. 

Self Care

This brings up the necessity for you to take care of your body as you go through this training, as all of it will be in front of a computer screen of some kind. See if you can find a way to stand for portions of the lecture, move around with us whenever we are demonstrating something, pause the video and walk around the room, part of this training is literally learning how to listen to your body in order to help it function optimally, so use this time together as a training ground to engage in this inner conversation. 

*let’s try it.  pause- notice your breathing, let is slow down and smooth out.  Notice your posture.  are you comfortable?  if not- shift.  Give yourself the freedom to stand or change positions.  Find balance and see if you can stay upright without creating tension

The second category of content for each learning module is the postures themselves. For all learners, these postures are presented in the lecture portion of the content, but to help expedite the learning process for everyone, we have gathered the poses together and organized them into their own category for quick access. 

Because the postures of our practice revolve around the premise that the body supports itself most naturally through movement, the postures themselves have been captured in the form of GIFs to help you see and feel this movement as you practice at home. So much easier than a 9 pose slide show!

From there we have curated a library of yoga classes that specifically explore the theme of each module, to help you let go of the head, and dive into the feeling of it all coming together in a fluid, holistic way. 

As you begin to pull together the content of the lectures, the repetition of the gifs, and the experience of the yoga classes, you are ready to let it synergize through teaching. 

For live-online learners, you will be starting each class day with teaching for 8 minutes to your fellow classmates, and then receiving feedback. For self-paced learners, you will take time to watch a few teacher’s teach via previous recordings, and then take time to record yourself teaching for about 8 minutes, and then send that video to us for feedback. We have a whole video explaining this process when you are at that portion of the training. 

For all learners, You are not expected to teach all the postures, or sequence them in any way— this is just a time to break the ice on teaching and allow us to see your physical postures in order to give feedback on your form and your cues. 

In addition to the Asana content, we also focus on the Subtler art forms of our tradition, such as Sanskrit (the language of the postures), pranayama (breathing exercises), philosophy (Yoga Sutras and Shiva Sutras), as well as Meditation practice itself. 

This is a resource for all learners, both live and self paced. We have broken these sections up and spaced them out evenly to allow you time to fully absorb and digest their rich content. There are also multiple guided meditations for each module to support you in cultivating a daily practice as you progress through the training. 

Cultivating a daily meditation practice is at the heart of the ShambhavAnanda Yoga tradition, there is simply no substitute for a personal practice— there is no amount of anatomy, creative cueing or personality that replace a teacher’s ability to teach from the heart of their experience. 

And, finally, at the end of each module, once you have completed all the work of a module, we take another moment to check in through a journaling activity. This is a time to tell us how the work is going for you on a practical level, in terms of understanding the content and teaching it, but also on a subtler level, with how you are moving in your life, or how your meditation practice is going. 

For live online learners, this is how we start our teaching day together. For self paced, we will take time to connect with you in a personal way which is detailed in that class section of the training. 

This simple formula repeats for every module of your training: learning, practice, teaching, feedback, meditation, and reflective journaling. Every few modules. This is also interspersed with Review sessions to circle back and ensure you are retaining the broader scope of the content. For self paced learners, these review sessions are a time for us to actually meet live online via zoom for an hour long review, teaching and feedback session. 

We are so glad to be sharing this journey with you! First, we would love to meet you— so please check out the next video!